THE COMFORT ZONE

Rainy Sundays were made for watching long films. Growing up, my dad would always want to watch a war movie and my mum would always choose a weepie (and I would always pick Indiana Jones…), so The Best Years Of Our Lives often came up as a family compromise.

Maybe one of the true original comfort films, William Wyler’s epic drama came out months after World War 2 ended – dealing with the post-war experience in real-time and helping audiences ease slowly back to normality. Three vets (Fredric March, Dana Andrews and real-life amputee Harold Russell) return to their families and Wyler watches them adapt for three hours – following them through all the highs and lows and loves and drunken sobbing of civilian life.

This isn’t exactly , and a lot of the film’s attempts at tackling PTSD now seem a bit corny, but there’s just enough darkness here to shade the light and make the film’s soapiness feel grounded in something real. Watching it over and over again on a wet British Sunday, it’s that realism that